


'Cause there's a blue sky waiting for us tomorrow

by gyunikum



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mentions of PTSD, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 20:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11608815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyunikum/pseuds/gyunikum
Summary: Collins and Farrier were each other's lucky charms. And then one day, Farrier didn't come back, and for three years, Collins battled with hope.





	'Cause there's a blue sky waiting for us tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> saw the movie three days ago and this happened. spent most of the time researching stuff (which you can't see in this fic lmao). this started out as a short drabble about their pre-mission 'ritual', and then i began writing their whole history because why not, and then because i hate not-happy endings, i had to go into fix-it fic territories. and then i added everything i could come up with for a platonic friendship.

Collins and Farrier had a ritual before every mission— their own lucky charm, they called it, a tradition of sorts for only the two of them. Neither of them were superstitious, oh, not at all— that, war, had torn out of them with its icy crimson fangs of reality and manslaughter. There was no space left for superstitions on the battlefield, not when their life depended on a concoction of raw physics and experience – or blind luck back when they were inexperienced – squeezed out through blood, sweat, and fears.

Many pilots claimed their success to God, a piece of wood dangling from their necks close to their drumming heart jacked up on pure adrenaline, of a person who sacrificed himself for a world long gone, for a world that had never thought humans would fly. Others survived for their loved ones, restless hope loaned to them by crumpled, oily photographs of spouses, kids, parents, those who they fought for, to give them a better world without the bloody clash between the horrors of what a fanatic mind could make someone do, and pure survival instinct.

To Collins, it was his trust in Farrier— and to Farrier, it was his trust in Collins.

Before the war, Collins had been religious. His whole family, they spent every Sunday morning in the local church for a reason that Collins, as a kid, had never understood— but he continued to follow his parents and his grandparents dutifully until he’d discover he had a knack for physics and engineering. Then, gone was his dream of taking over his father’s business, replaced by the longing to touch the sky. One of his father’s recurring client was an aerobatic pilot who’d agreed to take Collins under his and his plane’s wings.

Before joining the cadet training program of the air force, Collins had already spent hours flying solo. He was not the most natural of talents at manning an aircraft, and though his friends wouldn’t have called him docile, he wasn’t aggressive either— he had not the need for speed, but he had always managed to learn to look at the plane as an extension of his own body, felt the plane’s dimensions like no one else. Up in the air, control over the plane itself was number one priority.

In every aspect of his life, Farrier was the polar opposite of Collins— he had never been religious because on the streets of London, God didn’t exist, only the mud, the rats, and quick hands to pick pockets and quick feet to run for another day. He was the rage of fire where Collins was the calmness of a lake— it was like Farrier fed on rush and impatience, he was the archetype of act-then-ask. Farrier was born natural in every way Collins could only dream of being, which had gotten him through the cadet program and the primary pilot training, but the younger man had trouble treating aircraft more than just a tool to quench his burning desire to be at the edge, the same way he treated his own body. Farrier thought he was invincible, and Collins was, maybe, the only person who saw the profound vulnerability in it.

Starting from the cadet program, but also throughout the other trainings, they clashed with each other as if they were destined to be rivals— Collins once thought Farrier had been a calamity sent by God to punish him for not going to the Sunday service anymore, for leaving his cross and the words of his prayers at home with his parents. For leaving God on the ground, while he flew into the embrace of the endless, blue sky.

It was perhaps all thanks to their advanced flight instructor that they became friends at all— but at the time of being paired up, they had found each other unbearable. They were forced to share everything from their bunk bed to cleaning duty, and when Collins had asked his instructor for the reason, the words not only got Collins through the most difficult times because there was no way he was going to let Farrier make him wash out of the program as did half of their class, but also stayed with him for a lifetime, poetic as it sounded coming from a sergeant who drilled them into the ground every single day:

_“He could use some of your level-headedness, and you could use some of his drive. You two balance each other out.”_

Dealing with Farrier made the training a lot harder, but the more time they spent together both on ground and in air, Collins had started to see the results of the effect they had on each other— Farrier was less likely to rush into a situation head-first without thinking, while Collins found himself wanting to compete with the other, a fire he didn’t know he had before meeting Farrier burning in his guts.

They hadn’t considered each other friends until a hangar bash one night, right before the day they were made official fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force. Collins had had enough of the party, and he was returning to his quarters when he noticed Farrier outside in the company of a hastily rolled cigarette and a bottle of beer. The only thing Collins could remember was Farrier letting him a drag, and then the next moment they were throwing punches at each other, spewing drunken and petty insults at each other, because the fear of a looming war had been eating them from inside out since the first news that there was something going on in Germany. It ended when Collins landed a painful right hook on the younger pilot’s jaw that twirled Farrier face-first into the side of a scrap plane before he simply sprawled out on the ground, staring dazedly at the sky.

 _“I think the plane just talked to me,”_ Farrier had rasped, his chest rising and falling rapidly from the scuffle. Collins, hands braced on his knees, bent down to catch his breath, looked at Farrier in confusion.

 _“What’d she say?”_ Collins had asked, running the tip of his tongue over his cracked lip.

_“She told me to tell you to stop being a cunt.”_

And a quiet moment later Collins had burst out with a bellowing laughter, and Farrier followed him suit, and they laughed under the night sky, the only witness to the birth of their friendship.

 

Before their very first mission, Farrier had woken Collins in the dead of the night with a bottle he’d snatched from the kitchen with his quick hands, and two cigarettes with a single match, and they climbed up the empty, roofless guard tower in the corner of the airbase where they had been stationed. They scoured the stars quietly, passing the beer to each other until they ran out, and then they lit their cigarettes to let the acid smoke wash the second thoughts and fears out of their lungs before they could form in words of regret.

Yet Collins couldn’t stop his hands from trembling at the thought of being shot out of the sky.

 _“I can’t do it,”_ he’d whispered. He’d felt Farrier’s hand on his, slowly wrenching his fingers off the cigarette Collins had been squeezing without him noticing.

 _“Yes, you can.”_ Farrier had said. It was still weird to have him as the calm one, but Collins didn’t complain. _“And we are going to fly when dawn breaks. And then we’ll return, and then we’ll fly again. Until the war is over.”_

Collins whimpered, fear clawing at his legs, pulling him down, down onto the floor of the roofless cabin, his knees thudded on the wooden planks, and Farrier crouched down next to him.

_“We’re going to fly, because the blue sky is waiting for us tomorrow.”_

 

It had become their ritual before each mission— sometimes without beer, sometimes without cigarette, but always, _always_ with each other. They would watch the dark sky and the flickering stars, feeling small and insignificant in the scope of the universe, and in the scope of the war, and they would talk about nothing to get their minds off the odds of survival.

 _“What do you think the future would be like?”_ Farrier had asked once. There were things that Collins hadn’t known about Farrier, a lot of things, secrets they didn’t want to share with each other, so the younger pilot’s question surprised Collins into a silence long enough to make Farrier regret his query. _“Forget it—”_

 _“Tall buildings,”_ Collins had said, pursing his lips. The mouth of the bottle rested on his chin. It felt like the kiss of a lover. _“Made of glass that reflect the sky. Television with colour. Equal pay for women.”_ Farrier snorted. _“No wars.”_

 _“No wars,”_ Farrier echoed, like a scream for help from the bottom of an abyss.

 _“And you?”_ Collins had asked. He wondered what kind of future Farrier wanted the world to have— what kind of future he was fighting for.

 _“Never thought ‘bout it,”_ Farrier shrugged. _“But I’d wager there’ll be fast airplanes— jets faster than the sound, even.”_

Now Collins snorted. _“How would they survive the Gs,”_ he wondered. Farrier talking about the speed of sound reminded him of those theory classes in the cadet program where Collins would pass everything with flying colours while Farrier struggled to understand aerodynamics and how planes worked. Oh, just how different they had used to be— felt like a lifetime ago.

 _“Dunno. They would come up with something. They always do.”_ Farrier said, and Collins hummed. Maybe they would come up with something that would help the Allies win the war.

 

After the evacuation at Dunkirk, Collins had waited days for Farrier to return, until he had to break the news to himself— Farrier was not coming back. He was either shot out of the sky or he was captured by the Germans. Either way, he was to Collins what Mr Dawson’s elder son was to his father. Gone, an important person from his life, forever, the war had claimed him for itself.

Farrier had no family to contact, no lover to bear the responsibility of bringing the news of his death to— no way for Collins to say goodbye to his friend.

Maybe he didn’t want to say goodbye, not yet.

Only a stick of cigarette remained, rolled by Farrier’s calloused hands, and his meagre belongings that Collins packed into a single bag that took him an hour, because he held each and every object in his hands for a long time, just to look at them— he was just only beginning to understand Farrier’s absence. Even so when Collins had found his small sketchbook, full of drawings made by a dull graphite pencil that had never been sharpened— there were caricatures of people Farrier had met, though most of it was of Collins, simple plane designs that would never fly within terms of physics, and landscapes of rolling hills, fields and woodlands that Collins had always talked about when Farrier asked him about his hometown.

Collins had lost a part of himself that day near Dunkirk.

 

He kept Farrier’s belongings for three years. The war seemed endless, and Collins lost hope a long time ago— those images about the future he’d told Farrier seemed so distant, so out-of-reach. The world was in chaos in every four corners, and despite its heavy losses, Nazi Germany didn’t seem giving up.

Collins was tired of fighting— so very tired. _Hope dies last_ , they would say, but hope left Collins with Farrier. His hope was sunken on the bottom of the Channel, or crashed into enemy territory, or bled out by German torturers.

Hope was not Collins’ anymore. All he knew was the stick between his knees, the rattling of the Spitfire and the gallons ticking towards zero in every dog fight he had won. His goal was not fighting for a good cause anymore, but killing as many as he could— maybe enough blood spilled would appease God’s hunger and he would give Farrier back, even if for a single minute.

He brought the sketchbook with him wherever he was stationed, and he kept the roll of cigarette in his breast pocket, right above his heart— his own cross. Farrier’s other belongings rested in Collins’ childhood room at home, safe from the war.

Even after three years of missions, countless enemies killed by his bullets and bombs, and Collins sometimes still imagined Farrier was there to have his back. After Dunkirk, Collins never got a single hit— maybe it was Farrier, maybe it was God. Still, Collins kept the cigarette on him all times, in case his friend ever returned from his official status of MIA, and he would welcome Farrier with it. Every time Collins had free time, he would draw in Farrier’s half empty sketchbook— nowhere near as good as the younger pilot, but he’d found it kept him sane. Sometimes, he would get the twitches next to the constant nightmares— water still rushed into the cockpit even when he was angels five up, and there was no Peter Dawson to break the glass. Collins choked, each night, on his own, personal terror that he couldn’t run away from— he could only ease the fears by continuing Farrier’s drawings, clumsily, hands shaking and fingers unable to grasp the pencil as it glided on the rough paper blindly in the darkness.

Collins was tired.

Three years of missions. Almost four. A three quarter of which Collins had spent without Farrier. Collins wondered if time would ever get strong enough to extinguish the pain and make him come to terms with it— or did hope really die last?

 

The mess hall was overcrowded and all Collins wanted was a quiet place to lie down, because in his ears the Rolls Royce engine was still roaring, the plates of the Spitfire still rattled in his chest, and the wind still whistled like a punctured lung wheezed its last. His hands were still tingling from the stick’s vibrations.

His squadron mates congratulated Collins like he’d saved the day, because they thought he’d risked his own life to take down the Schwalbe that glued itself to the Mosquito Collins has been tasked with enforcing to save the photo-retcon plane— in truth, all he’d done was letting rage take over him. It didn’t matter to the others though because Collins was the squadron’s lucky charm, as it was with pilots that managed to survive long enough to be treated like a miracle.

Collins was no miracle. He was just a lost man, looking for solitude and peace in the endless blues.

“Squadron Leader Collins?” someone asked, or maybe Collins just hallucinated it. He continued eating until he glanced at one of the pilots from his squadron across the table staring at someone behind Collins.

“Mate,” the pilot said, “she’s talking to you.”

Collins tossed the spoon into the bowl, clinking louder than a 7.92 mm of a Messerschmitt ripping through metal. Then he turned around, and noticed a young bird in a nurse’s outfit looking at him awkwardly. She couldn’t have been older than nineteen, but in her eyes he could see she’d been to the frontlines.  

“Were you part of the RAF air support at Dunkirk?”

Collins swallowed, a lump growing in his throat as he nodded. There had been only a handful of pilots supporting the evacuation that week— even less that had managed to return. Most people didn’t even know there had been air support at all.

“There’s a man in the southern hospital wing looking for you. He’d been just—”

Collins didn’t hear the rest because he was halfway out the mess hall already, towards the infirmary he’d rarely visited. The hospital wing was half a cemetery, rarely anybody lucky enough to make it there returned to active duty.

He ran down empty corridors that reeked of death and the smell of a disinfectant that would never leave the walls as long as the building stood. He had no idea where to go, all hallways looked the same, and Collins felt like he was lost in the middle of the Atlantic without a compass.

Before Collins turned a corner, he heard voices that forced him to come to a halt and hide behind a wall, listening— he’d only glimpsed a sergeant standing in a small circle of officials before Collins had to bounce back.

“What’s the pilot’s status? Is he able to speak?”

“The initial diagnosis says he doesn’t have CSR, but he refuses to talk without the person he’d asked for.”

“Have they found this Collins yet?”

“They are still looking.”

The sound of steps was overshadowed by the drumming of Collins’ heart in his throat, each heartbeat a bomb shaking the ground. As the officers passed by him, not noticing the pilot as they walked down the corridor, Collins had to brace his arms against the wall not to double over— he was short on breath, and water was rushing in his ears once again, into the cockpit that was quickly filling up, and the flare gun was out of Collins’ reach—

“Hey, hey, are you okay?” a nurse asked, her voice, though worried, pulling Collins back to the present. All he could manage was a nod as he let the woman help him straighten out. “Are you here for the pilot? Are you Collins?”

“Yeah—”

“What’s your blood group?” she asked, tugging at his arm. She began walking towards where the officers had had their discussion.

Collins was afraid.

Farrier was dead— he’d been dead for three years. Nobody was going to bring him back, not even God.

“O negative.”

“Your friend needs your blood.”

Collins stopped before the door, legs growing roots into the floor as soon as he noticed the man lying on the hospital bed. He couldn’t recognize the man.

Farrier was gone, Collins told himself, like he'd told himself for three years to make himself understand.  

 

Why hadn’t Farrier bailed out when he had the chance? He could have landed on the beach— he could have hitched a ride home with the other soldiers— he could have showed that there was the bloody air support—

For three years, this question had been undoing Collins at the seams.

 

“Hey, mate.”

 

Now, it didn’t matter anymore.

The cigarette in the inner pocket, just above Collins’ heart burned through his shirt, into his skin. Farrier was alive.

The blue sky awaited them again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> in nolan we trust


End file.
